


But I Just Couldn't

by untune_the_sky



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Breakup, F/M, I'm Sorry, Not A Happy Ending, POV Second Person, Second person POV, mentions of canon-typical violence, sadfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untune_the_sky/pseuds/untune_the_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>"Like a tragedy, like a dark comedy..."<br/>"The Man Who Never Lied" — Maroon 5<br/><br/>***</p>
</div><br/><br/>Assassins don't handle heartbreak well.<br/><br/>You know that from personal experience.<br/>
            </blockquote>





	But I Just Couldn't

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "The Man Who Never Lied", same as the epigraph. This is literally the first thing I wrote when I got into the MCU fandom. I'm kind of glad everything else I've come up with since then isn't nearly this angsty. 
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated, if you're so inclined. If you see something that you think ought to be tagged/warned for, let me know! :)

Assassins don't handle heartbreak well. 

You know that from personal experience.

You wish you didn't, but that's the short and the long of it — the reason you're standing in the middle of the street, your partner on the other side of the motorcycle looking at you like you’re a puzzle she needs to take apart just to put you back together properly.

Your saddlebags are at your feet.

Your quiver is on your back.

Her hair is red again.

She's holding a gun on you just to keep you from moving. 

You don't think she'll actually use it, but. 

But assassins don't handle heartbreak well.

You know that from personal experience — and you wish you didn't. 

The safety's off, the barrel aimed unerringly at your chest. You briefly entertain the thought that she'll do it — classic chest shots, center mass — obliterate that tired, overworked muscle. It's what got you into this mess, after all.

 

 _Rewind._  

 

Skip back — past Paris and Antigua, past Edinburgh and Lima, past Sydney. You know exactly when everything changed. You know when _you_ broke the first promise you ever made to her. You know when _she_ broke your heart.

You wouldn't have cared about the doctors and the nurses, the assistants or the secretaries — the people who made all those seemingly minor, life-changing decisions and landed in the hospital on that day. You'd have helped her lock the doors, cut the electricity, light the fuse.

You'd have done all that and more for her — gladly. 

She didn't give you the chance.

There was no discussion, and she _knew_. She knew what she was doing, but she thought it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. When she came back to your hotel covered in soot, you knew what she'd done. None of that would have mattered, but for the children.

The children broke you — just babies, locked in the hidden rooms beneath the hospital. They’d been wrapped up in death and deceit, trained to lure and lull — to kill without questioning, without thought. 

She told you, looked you right in the eye and _told_ you that there was no salvation for them. They were perfect, porcelain dolls — hollow-eyed and irredeemable.

Your breath left you, everything left you in that moment. You asked her what that made _her_. She'd been just like them, once.

She didn't have an answer for you.

She asked you if that mattered. 

 

 _Pause_.

 

It's that moment that crystallizes in your mind. That's the vector, the point from which your life left the path you'd chosen. You didn't want to take that turn, you never wanted to — not ever. 

And yet. 

You lied.

You'd promised her — battered and bloodied, bruised and half-broken — that you'd never lie to her, just as long as she never lied to you. _Trust_. You offered her something that no one else ever had. It was the one commodity you'd possessed that she craved. You'd recognized it in her, in that moment just before you let the final arrow fly, because it was the thing that _you_ had craved so long ago.

But the words fell from your mouth like stones plopping inelegantly into a pond — forever changing the composition of the ecosystem there, leaving no evidence once the ripples faded.

 

 _Play_.

 

You said, "No. It doesn't matter."

 

 _Fast forward_.

 

Sydney, the opera she dragged you to.

Lima, the fiasco at the embassy.

Edinburgh, nearly getting caught by castle security.

Antigua, the shack next to the beach — the blood on the counter.

Paris, the new cold war that made you run.

Now. 

 

 _Play_.

 

The small crease between her brows —

The gun in her hand —

The questions she's throwing at you like grenades —

"Who?" 

"Where?" 

"Why?"

They _are_ grenades. The timers are just delayed. All in good time — everything ends. The two of you are going to go down in a rain of shrapnel and debris, you think. That, or you'll disappear as though you never existed.

 

 _Pause_.

 

You promised you'd never lie to her. 

She promised she'd never betray your trust. 

She did.

You did. 

Broken promises lay scattered between the two of you, dropped like afterthoughts in cities the whole world over. You will never be free of them — of her. Everything in your life now is wrapped up in scraps and shards of her. The frayed and tattered parts of you that remain are not enough to hold the two of you together any longer, but —

You will never be free.

 

 _Play_.

 

You answer the question she hasn't asked — because you don't need her to ask it. You don't need to hear the words to know what's on her mind. You never have.

"Moscow," you say, your voice so calm — so very, very soft. "The hospital fire." 

Her breath leaves her slowly, and she lowers the gun. You hear the safety click on as she looks at you. Her eyes linger on your leather jacket, your arms, the shattered remains of your partnership.

She nods slowly. 

She knows.

And then she walks away.

The single best — the single _worst_ — thing in your life, and she walks away without a backward glance.

 

 _Stop_.


End file.
